“It is, by any standard, a shameful act that someone like Mazhar Abbas whose unblemished journalism career has spanned decades and who has practiced unbiased journalism and stood for freedom of press in Pakistan can be meted out such an unacceptable treatment by PTI activists,” FN, Pakistan’s first media rights group, said in press freedom alert issued on December 15, 2014.

Abbas is also a member of the Steering Committee of Pakistan Coalition on Media Safety (PCOMS), a media sector multi-sectoral platform representing media owners, media workers, civil society, parliament, the government and opposition, working together to promote a safer environment for working journalists in the country. PCOMS is working to bring media safety laws and special prosecutors at the federal and provincial levels to investigate attacks against the media, as well as standard safety protocols, procedures and practices to promote greater media safety and professionalism in Pakistan.

Although Khan was quick to respond to the ugly situation created by his supporters in Karachi by personally telephoning Abbas and assuring him that no such incident would happen again, it appears that the party activists and their leader have a clear pattern of attacking the dissenting media quite regularly since August 14, 2014, when the party launched a series of countrywide protests.

The PTI activists have regularly been attacking Jang Media Group buildings and assets, including DSNG vans and cameras, as well as several of its journalists including Abbas, Maria Memon, Omaima Ahmed, Sana Mirza, Aizaz Syed, Masood Raza, Sidra Khan and several others, including cameramen and drivers. All these attacks were at the PTI protest venues and are documented on tape. Distressingly the party activists are targeting women journalists.

“Party activists and supporters will display such aggressive behavior towards any journalist when its leaders publicly name channels they consider are critical of their politics. Imran Khan cannot exclude himself from complete responsibility for acts of intimidation of the media committed by their followers,” the FN press freedom alert said. “Most senior journalists in Pakistan are getting convinced that these attacks on mediapersons are result of Imran Khan’s ‘personal grudge’ against a certain media group that he has repeatedly expressed in public,”

Since Khan’s party launched its protest movement against the ruling party for alleged elections rigging, more than a dozen incidents targeting journalists and technical staff and media assistants belonging to Geo News channel and dailies Jang and The News have been deliberately targeted by PTI activists. These incidents have been caught on tape.

Geo News channel’s bureau in Islamabad has been deliberate target of the party’s activists and supporters since the movement was camped close to the national Parliament’s building in D-Chowk of the federal capital city smashing windowpanes and damaging parked vehicles of journalists working for the channel.

“Imran Khan and PTI, like any other politician and political party are entitled to protest and criticize anyone and anything, but this right to freedom of expression does not extend to physical violence against journalists and media practitioners, and defamation, including slander and libel, without evidence of alleged misdemeanor, or harassment, intimidation and censorship,” FN press freedom alert said.

“In August 2014, the police under the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N also was caught on tape brutally beating at least 17 journalists in a single day. The dangerous trend of political parties in Pakistan browbeating the media must come to a stop because an attack on media is an attack on not just freedom of expression but also an attack on the citizenry’s right to know and a responsible and accountable State itself.”

Mazhar Abbas told FN that the PTI supporters and activists made it “difficult to report” the party’s protest meetings that day in Karachi. “I was outside the PTI’s Karachi office analyzing the situation for my channel when these elements were making indecent gestures and abusing and manhandling all of us. One of our female colleagues, Omaima Ahmed, got herself locked inside the DSNG van when these activists and supporters surrounded her outside,” he said.

“It was nothing new for me as I had seen all this in my career, but I was concerned about young journalists, particularly women, who came in this profession with a dream like Sidra and Humaima.”

Three days later in Lahore on December 15, PTI activists misbehaved with Geo News female anchor Sana Mirza, senior reporters Amin Hafeez and Ahmad Faraz. The violent protesters attacked the Geo News team with water bottles and rocks thrown by slings. They also pushed and shoved reporters and anchorpersons of Geo and forced them to leave the spot.

The protesters attacked anchorperson Sana Mirza and Amin Hafeez with water bottles and slingshots at Charing Cross at 5pm. They stopped them from reporting and asked them to leave the scene. The violent activists also did not spare senior journalist and analyst Sohail Warraich. They pushed him and used abusive language against him.

Sana Mirza was seen trying to control her emotions while describing the ugly situation she faced while doing letting the countrymen have latest from  Lahore where Imran Khan’s supporters paralyzed public life shutting the city completely.

Image courtesy: Aqil Yousafzai

Balochistan which is the biggest province of the country area-wise gets the least attention of the mainstream media of the country. In August 2014, a senior local journalist along with two of his colleagues was assassinated in his Quetta office in an incident of target-killing. But the news could not get much attention in the mainstream media which was mainly focused giving an extraordinary extensive coverage to the anti-government protests in Islamabad.

Irshad Mastoi was shot along with a trainee journalist Abdul Rasul and an accountant in his office at a centrally located building in the provincial capital Quetta on August 28, 2014. Over the preceding six years dozens of journalists have been murdered in Pakistan, many of them from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and the tribal region of FATA which borders Afghanistan.

The journalists’ communities from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and the FATA complain that the mainstream media of the country gives a lot more attention to any attacks on journalists in the two bigger provinces and the capital Islamabad compared to the ones carried out against local journalists in the two smaller provinces and the FATA region.

Giving an example, members of the journalists’ communities from the smaller provinces of Pakistan say when earlier this year two senior journalists, Hamid Mir and Raza Rumi, were injured in two separate attacks, the main Pakistani media gave an extensive coverage to the tragic incidents for several weeks. Both of them worked with the two main news TV channels which have their base in the capital Islamabad and the biggest province Punjab. They complain if these journalists were from the smaller provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan the attacks would likely have inadequate coverage by the mainstream media of the country.

It is not only the members of journalists’ communities from the smaller provinces who are complaining that they are being ignored by the mainstream Pakistani media, the politicians, members of the civic societies from these regions have similar complaints against the mainstream Pakistani media.

In June 2014, Pakistan launched a long-awaited military action against the Taliban and other militants in the North Waziristan area of FATA. As result of the military action more than one million local people were displaced from the region, many of whom shifted to makeshift camps while some others are living without any shelter. Soon after the military action two anti-government politicians along with many of their supporters march on the capital Islamabad and staged a long sit-in against the government demanding resignation of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Pakistani media almost completely ignored the plight of more one million internally displaced people from North Waziristan and this important military action, described as crucial for the survival of the country.

The mainstream news TV channels instead continued round-the-clock live coverage to the sit-ins for last several weeks. Many of these internal refugees complained that they are giving sacrifices for the national security of the whole country but the central government and the mainstream media have completely ignored them.

Some local journalists from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders North Waziristan, said there is a general sense among the internal refugees from North Waziristan that the government didn’t do much to provide them with basic facilities, mainly because the Pakistani media was focused on the Islamabad protests. These refugees complain that ever since the anti-government demonstrations have started in the capital Islamabad the main news TV channels of the country have almost completely ignored them and the humanitarian aspect of their displacement.

There is also a sense among analysts that the disproportionately extensive media coverage encouraged the demonstrators and their leaders to harden their stands and plunge the country into a prolonged political crisis.

Some years ago, feeling under pressure that the smaller provinces are not being given enough coverage by the mainstream, Geo TV, one of the main news channels of the country, launched a special talk-show called ‘Jirga’ to highlight issues relating to the two smaller provinces and the FATA region. One of its shows in the fall of 2014 was held in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. The host of the show, Salim Safi, was shocked to see the level of anger among local politicians who were complaining that their province was being completely ignored by the country’s news media though it is as much part of the country as the two provinces of the country.

Media observers believe, it is actually the cut-throat competition in the media market and the ratings that mater to the owners of the news media in Pakistan. They say it’s the market aspect and revenues that the news media moguls are more interested than the humanitarian aspects of the life in the smaller provinces of the country or the FATA region.

The author has 18 years of experience in reporting, analyzing and commenting on politics in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has worked with the BBC in London, Voice of America in Washington and Radio Free Europe in Prague. As a senior journalist from the region, Ghilzai has contributed numerous articles to these and other media broadcasters and publications.

The government suddenly shut down the station in May 2013 without giving any reason in advance. “Our radio (Radio Miranshah) started broadcasting in 2004 along with three other stations. But they got into trouble within a few months. A station in South Waziristan tribal agency on the borders with Afghanistan was destroyed in bomb blast,” he recalls to Freedom Network, Pakistan first media watchdog.

He thinks these radio channels were not only a good source for news and knowledge but entertainment for the local people. “They had deep impact on the tribal people.”

Mr Rehman has to work now very far from his home with another organisation in the Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa’s provincial capital, Peshawar. The tribal authorities (FATA secretariat) had set up four radio stations working in the tribal region (FATA) – Radio Khyber, Radio Wana , Radio Miranshah and Radio Razmak. Later, (the then) governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Shaukat Ullah announced re-opening these stations and also released Rupees 60 million for the purpose but no progress as yet. Some former employees have already moved the Peshawar High Court against closure of three of the four FM stations and sacking of the staff. The court has sought reply from the Fata Secretariat.

The petitioners’ lawyers, Abdul Latif Afridi, and Jehanzeb Khan, submitted before the two-member bench headed by Justice Musarrat Hilali that the stations were established in 2004 for peace and development in the militancy-hit tribal agencies. They informed the court that the basic aim of the radio stations was to educate the people of Fata through informative programmes, talk-shows and news.

These radios were very popular in FATA because of the area’s difficult terrain, lack of access to the internet and television, and the lack of education among the majority of the local population. The majority cannot watch television due to non-availability of electricity and other resources. Newspapers are only read by educated people. Local population heavily relies on international and national radio stations for news.

While the authorities have failed to create conducive environment favourable for media growth in these regions, the militants enjoyed until recently free hand to run their illegal FM stations. The electronic regulator authority (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) has been by law stopped from issuing any licences for media in the tribal region.

In FATA, the FM stations working are under paramilitary Frontier Corps (security forces) control. Though these stations provide entertainment but majority of listeners observe that they are “one-sided and have no news or political talk shows.”

According to a research on the media landscape in Pakistan by media development expert Ms Sadaf Baig recently, noted that “the importance of radio as a medium of information in FATA is well established. In the absence of other mediums, radio remains the key source of news for a majority of FATA’s population. Radio is also the only medium with a local focus and thus becomes the news medium with the most influence in the area.”

The data gathered during this survey shows that more than 91% of the respondents have a radio set and are active listeners of multiple stations. Amongst the 70 respondents nearly 60% listen to at least three radios stations and the rest regularly listen to more than three stations. National and local news have been identified as the main reasons for listening to radio.

According to a recent handout issued from Fata Secretariat quoting additional chief secretary, Fata, Mohammad Azam Khan that FM radio stations would be set up in all seven tribal agencies and frontier regions with a central production facility in Fata Secretariat, Peshawar soon. Azam khan says that establishment of FM radios would be a source of information and education, besides providing entertainment to the tribal people. Mr Khan also says that they would also help provide jobs to the educated tribal youth, especially the unemployed journalists.

One hopes that they government rises to this basic need of the tribal people for access to local news and content soon.

The author is a tribal journalist based in Khar, Bajaur tribal district near Afghan border.

Nov 7: Khud Niaz, the second accused in murder case of journalist Ayub Khattak, is arrested in Landkamar area of Karak district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Nov 15: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf supporters ‘harass; and ‘intimidate’ GeoNews crew during party leader Imran Khan’s protest rally in Sahiwal district of Punjab province.

Nov 18: During a public dialogue on journalists’ safety in Quetta, Balochistan minister for information Abdul Rahim Ziaratwal commits to protecting journalists in his province.

Nov 19: Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists observes Journalisst Martyrs Day saluting colleagues who fell in line of duty.

Nov 24: A centre is opened in Peshawar to help treat ‘traumatized journalists’ with the help of Peshawar University and German NGO Deutsche Welle.

Nov 25: A court in Gilgit hands Geo News owner Mir Shakilur Rehman, host Shaista Lodhi, actress Veena Malik and her husband Malik Asad 26 years jail and fine of Rs.1.3 million in a blasphemy case. http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailNews.php?StoryText=26_11_2014_005_006

Nov 27:Court in #Balochistan stays cases against #Geo channel owner in blasphemy case. http://jang.com.pk/jang/nov2014-daily/27-11-2014/u34599.htm

Nov 30: DSNG vans of Dawn News, Dunya News and Aabtak TV channels in Islamabad after #PTI protest meeting at D-Chowk. Some unknown people threw crackers on the vans injuring technical staff and damaging the vehicles.

The anti-terrorism court sentenced in absentia Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, owner of Geo TV and its parent Jang Media Group, actress Veena Malik, her husband Asad Bashir and morning TV show host Dr Shaista Wahidi, to 26 years in prison each for airing a “contemptuous” programme in May this year. The four convicts were each also fined Rs1.3 million (USD 12,800).
“At a time when media in Pakistan is already trying to face off several challenges and find its focus, the court judgment will not go well for it. Though of little legal effect in mainland Pakistan, the verdict symbolic implications for the struggling media can’t be underestimated,” the FN said in its alert, adding that several international human rights bodies such as Amnesty International have expressed serious concerns about the fairness of the trial.
FN calls on the Pakistan government to take immediate steps to review the court’s judgment and “stop actions that can have very serious negative effect on freedom of expression in the country.”

The controversy started when Geo TV (Entertainment) aired a programme in May this year, wherein Veena Malik and her spouse Bashir re-enacted their wedding ceremony with a devotional Qawaali.

The court verdict also comes at a time when Geo continues to have a tense relationship with the Pakistani authorities, especially the security establishment after an attack on Geo News famous anchor Hamid Mir in Karachi. The anchor’s family had accused the spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of being behind an assassination attempt on him.

Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman is based outside Pakistan, while Malik and Bashir have left the country after receiving death threats when the blasphemy allegations were first levelled against them. Malik told Amnesty International that she fears for her life if she returns to Pakistan.

On 6 June this year, the governmental body Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) had already, as a punishment, suspended Geo TV’s license for 15 days over the blasphemy allegation. In a published statement, Geo’s sister publication, The News International, argued that “this is the very same programme for which Geo has already been fined an unprecedented amount and had its channel taken off air.”

The newspaper also recalled that numerous apologies had been issued by Geo and scholars across the spectrum of religious thought had accepted these apologies. It also questioned the jurisdiction of the court to take such extreme step. “How is it that an anti-terrorist court in Gilgit has jurisdiction in the matter, especially when so many other FIRs against the accused have been dismissed, including in the city where Geo is based?”

“The move is direct attack on freedom of expression in the country,” FN, Pakistan’s first media watchdog organization monitoring and defending freedom of press, freedom of expression and online freedom, said Thursday (20 November 2014) in its alert.

FN alert goes on to add: “The Sindh government is under constitutional obligation to defend freedom of expression and ensures that the book is available all through the book stories in Karachi and elsewhere in Sindh province.”

A spokesman for the author issued Tuesday (18 November 20014) a press release to call the move as “forceful removal” of the book containing allegations against former president Asif Ali Zardari, who is also heading Pakistan People’s Party governing the Sindh province where the book is facing enforced censorship.

It was “a forceful removal,” but did not mention any name for the move. He said no such incident was reported from other parts of the country.

“We have reports of forceful removal of books from Karachi outlets. In other cities, the outlets ran out of stocks and ordered for more copies. The removal incident has only been reported from Karachi,” he was quoted as saying.

A team of FN returning from Karachi on Monday (17 November 2014) experienced that a bookseller at the Jinnah International Airport was hesitant to sell the book because he was “ordered” to remove the book, which he kept off public eyes.

A report in Dawn newspaper quoting a couple of prominent outlets on Tuesday said the book had been “banned” and, “therefore, its copies would no longer be available at the stores.”

When it was pointed out that the book was never banned, an official at one of the stores said copies of the book were removed from the shelves because they contained derogatory remarks against some ‘influential national personalities’.

The author, Sadruddin Hashwani, who owns a chain of five-star hotels and runs other businesses, launched the book on 16 November 2014 alleging that Mr Zardari was killing him.

Mr Zardari has already served a legal notice for Rs1 billion on Hashwani for “tarnishing his name and that of the PPP” in his book.

The PPP co-chairman has also served notices on the publisher and distributor of the book — the Penguin Books in Haryana, India, and Liberty Books in Karachi.

In his book, Hashwani recalled what he described as “lifelong rivalry” with Mr Zardari which began with a clash in a hotel’s discotheque three decades ago.

“The move is direct attack on freedom of expression in the country,” FN, Pakistan’s first media watchdog organization monitoring and defending freedom of press, freedom of expression and online freedom, said Thursday (20 November 2014) in its alert.

FN alert goes on to add: “The Sindh government is under constitutional obligation to defend freedom of expression and ensures that the book is available all through the book stories in Karachi and elsewhere in Sindh province.”

A spokesman for the author issued Tuesday (18 November 20014) a press release to call the move as “forceful removal” of the book containing allegations against former president Asif Ali Zardari, who is also heading Pakistan People’s Party governing the Sindh province where the book is facing enforced censorship.

It was “a forceful removal,” but did not mention any name for the move. He said no such incident was reported from other parts of the country.

“We have reports of forceful removal of books from Karachi outlets. In other cities, the outlets ran out of stocks and ordered for more copies. The removal incident has only been reported from Karachi,” he was quoted as saying.

A team of FN returning from Karachi on Monday (17 November 2014) experienced that a bookseller at the Jinnah International Airport was hesitant to sell the book because he was “ordered” to remove the book, which he kept off public eyes.

A report in Dawn newspaper quoting a couple of prominent outlets on Tuesday said the book had been “banned” and, “therefore, its copies would no longer be available at the stores.”

When it was pointed out that the book was never banned, an official at one of the stores said copies of the book were removed from the shelves because they contained derogatory remarks against some ‘influential national personalities’.

The author, Sadruddin Hashwani, who owns a chain of five-star hotels and runs other businesses, launched the book on 16 November 2014 alleging that Mr Zardari was killing him.

Mr Zardari has already served a legal notice for Rs1 billion on Hashwani for “tarnishing his name and that of the PPP” in his book.

The PPP co-chairman has also served notices on the publisher and distributor of the book — the Penguin Books in Haryana, India, and Liberty Books in Karachi.

In his book, Hashwani recalled what he described as “lifelong rivalry” with Mr Zardari which began with a clash in a hotel’s discotheque three decades ago.

In November 2014 in Quetta in Balochistan, a similarly minor girl went missing. The kidnapping wasn’t caught on tape but the ending was more tragic: she was not just raped but also tortured and killed. She was an ethnic Hazara, the daughter of poor parents. There has been virtually no media coverage. The English language newspapers have carried some reports about it and the Urdu-langue print media even less. The TV channels are characterized by a near-deafening silence. Why this difference between media coverage of events of equally horrific proportions? The little lost girl in Lahore and the little lost girl in Quetta – separated by province, nationality, ethnicity, language, culture and sect. Treated with the same disdain by cruel men but differently by a media that otherwise seems to thrive on misery and sensation. Why this difference in coverage, then?

There are no written policies in the Pakistani media sector that dissuades media houses from covering certain themes, regions and people, of course. And yet the media in general prioritizes reporting of these partly by way of unwritten policies and partly by default. Unwritten policies dictate some taboos – the patchy and pitiable coverage of Balochistan in general and the misfortunes of the marginalized communities therein is the manifestation of pressures from both State and non-State actors. Highlighting issues and communities that touch communal, class and circumstance from Balochistan entail greater likelihood of blowback from pressure groups than it does in regions like Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Media has, therefore, learnt to navigate the competing demands and expectations heaped on them by the pressure groups in Balochistan. Restraint and approved rhetoric are the regulations for Balochistan when it comes to soundbites media.

The issues and events the Pakistani media covers are also heavily dictated by circumstance – four-fifths of Pakistan’s media density lies east of Indus: Islamabad, Punjab and Sindh. Hence these regions figure more, and more consistently on the airwaves, than the regions west of Indus: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan. This characteristic is, however, not just a manifestation of the fact that where the need for and about information is greatest is where it is least available. It is also a matter of audiences and, hence, advertisers.

Because the primary business of media is to sell its audiences to its advertisers, Pakistani media services information, commentary and analysis about regions on its screens where its viewers and readers are in bulk. It’s easier to attract eyeballs to outrage emanating from Punjab and Sindh than it is from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan. This is partly why the travails of thousands of people in Thar, despite not being an urban agenda, gets more coverage and more consistently than the plight of hundreds of thousands of IDPs from FATA who have been homeless in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Pakistani media is also, inevitably, choosy in its political bent. Overwhelmingly headquartered and operational in regions that are politically and economically more stable (east of Indus), their agendas are mostly urban (political and economic), their preoccupations those of middle classes (religion and business) and their priorities more profit-oriented (advertising and consumerism) than issue-based (development, empowerment or reforms – and which is also why opinion triumphs over analysis).

For the media, the victim in Quetta ticked off all the wrong boxes. She was a girl. She was a Hazara. She lived in Balochistan. She was poor. She was not a consumer. She was not urban – a refugee in Quetta, not a local resident. Pakistan’s media – while a compromised prisoner of its own market and moral dynamics – deals in the mainstream, not the marginalized. Despite the low-income background of the family of the girl victim of Lahore, she was in the ‘right’ province, had an urban background and provided the right backdrop to draw the right audiences that the advertisers clamor for. While both girls were equal victims, the Quetta girl child victim was never going to get even 15 minutes of accumulative coverage what to speak of the 15 days that the Lahore girl child victim got.

The author is a media analyst and media development specialist based in Pakistan. He may be reached at: adrehmat@gmail.com or @adnanrehmat1

A version of this blog appeared on Dawn.com on November 13, 2014.

People have a right to freedom of expression and this right needs to be respected. For this to happen we need to support efforts to promote tolerance in society. Considering that ours is a country embroiled in conflicts this is understandably difficult to do but all the more important.

Past policies to disrespect pluralisms are to blame for fanning of conflict. This larger climate of conflict is also why journalists in Balochistan have become unfortunate victims. They find themselves caught among forces that are causing them harm. This must change.

Lies and half-truths take the place of truth and chaos in the place of order in an environment where violence is commonplace. This is also hurting communities such as journalists. The government of Balochistan is

The government will do all it can to provide safety for journalists in the province. This can be done through provision of resources and access to systems such as law enforcement – but clearly this is not enough. But we are willing to do all we can to change this by doing more. If this requires the need to change laws or bring new laws, the Balochistan government is willing to do this. But we need to sit down and talk with the journalists so that we can come up with agreeable solutions that can help journalists.

We acknowledge the state of insecurity plaguing journalists. We will sit down with the media community to determine ways of collaborating effectively to reduce risks to journalists in Balochistan. The government of Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik fully supports the demand for greater engagement from the government with the journalists on the issue of safety of journalists. In tandem with the journalists’ community we will make forward movement on investigating attacks on journalists and providing justice to them.

We acknowledge that the media and journalists’ community is an important stakeholder in the project of developing a strong, peaceful and progressive society. The journalists and political parties and the government of Balochistan share with the journalists a common goal of strengthening democracy, promoting tolerance and focusing on development. We express solidarity with the journalists’ in Balochistan in the travails they face and offer commitment and assurance that we will work together to address these problems.

As the first event of its kind expanding the post-Snowden digital security debate to Pakistan, participants agreed that “anonymity is becoming a scarcity online now”.

Pakistan is “Customer #32” of the notorious FinFisher, a spyware marketed to enable governments to fight crime but increasingly used to snoop on citizens, including activists, journalists, bloggers and politicians. Most recently, governments in Bahrain and Ethiopia have allegedly used the software for unlawful surveillance of human rights campaigners.

The conference held in Islamabad on November 14, 2014 was organized by the Digital Rights Foundation in collaboration with Freedom Network and Privacy International.

Who are vulnerable?

Everyone who uses the internet, essentially, but in Pakistan’s case, there is also now a trend where women are increasingly more vulnerable as patriarchy extends to online where “exes and boyfriends use revenge porn and other means of online harassment against women.”

“For the younger people it has sinister dimensions as they increasingly live their lives online,” said Fouad Bajwa, a public policy analyst who specializes in internet rights and governance. “It is hopeless. I recently had to find a solution (legislation, protection) to protect a woman attacked on online. But the laws and attitudes encourage punishment before protection – punishment is primary, protection rights are treated as secondary.”

Governments, said Adnan Rehmat, a media analyst associated with International Media Support, are essentially public animals, not private while the public are private. “Governments are suspicious and therefore intermediaries that process information for the public such as journalists and bloggers become vulnerable,” he said. They are followed, have to contend with fake accounts, attacked, and harassed as the case of The News investigative reporter Umar Cheema, one of the panelists, illustrated. Cheema, who has won several awards for courage in journalism, was abducted and beaten by a group of assailants that hacked into his mail box, saying he was out to malign the government with his reporting.

National Interest

There are no specific laws on handling data, and governments do ask Internet Service Providers for it, so the responsibility to stay safe lies with the user, the discussants noted. But when it comes to activism, even feminist workers are declared as ‘enemy of the state’ because they speak about human rights and that, in the government views, maligns its image internationally. “In my previous life as a child rights activist, I took up a case of rape of a minor girl in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province”, said Bushra Gohar, a member of the Awami National Party. “I was told I am working against national interest!”

Fouad Bajwa said that 3 to 6 months of all data is recorded in Pakistan by the authorities and kept to “develop evidence”, to map out the movement and intent of criminals and terrorists. “What about ordinary civilians then, because surveillance is happing on everybody?” he asked. “We didn’t have this in Pakistan. Foreign companies came in and gave the ideas to the state.”

He said there was the need to incorporate human rights concerns and obligations into the cybercrime laws and policies. “Privacy online (a citizen’s concern) vs crime online (the state’s concern): How can we establish the balance, between policing and privacy.”

“The time was right to talk about how the government was intruding into people’s lives, acquiring information without their knowledge. We are trying to initiate a debate on privacy”, said Nighat Dad, Executive Director, DRF.

Policy stagnation versus protection

In the last one decade, apart from bring in the 3G and 4G technology for mobile communication, there hasn’t been any policy design mechanism established or decisions taken to look into online consumer protection.

Pakistan shares biometric data on citizens with the US National Security Agency (NSA). “The security standards and how safe the data is, cannot be commented upon with certainty”, said a panelist. “Your identity is the primary information in your privacy context. Post 9/11 the passport, the cross border movement tracking, the ID card system are all fitted into a chip with your credit card and back information.”

Ben Wagner, Director of the Centre for Internet and Human Rights, said unlicensed exports of surveillance software were going up whereas that of licensed going down.

“We are enabling not just NSA, but hundreds of smaller ‘NSAs’, through software are enabling governments to snoop on citizens”, he said. “It is all political and that is why the governments do it. In Ethiopia and Bahrain activists have been under surveillance and put in jails. There needs to a move away from spying to human security.”

He said the UN report on human rights also speaks of digital security. “Few people know this but a Pakistani woman, Shaista Ikramullah (author of Purdah to Parliament) was on the UN team that drafted the Universal Human Rights Declaration.”

Mr Wagner spoke of how the European countries are increasingly using trade as a tool to promote human rights. “The GSP Plus [Generalized System of Preferences, a tariff system] that Pakistan is a part to, has a human rights component. Countries are annually reviewed for the human rights record and can stay or be stricken off the GSP Plus depending on how they perform.” Bangladesh, and more recently Sri Lanka, was struck off the GSP Plus because of their human rights record.

The death of privacy

The session on legislation on privacy presented a white paper on surveillance laws and practices in Pakistan, asked questions about the role and limit of law on digital surveillance: is privacy the first right to die post World War II? How do we pressurize the legislatures to improve the law through influence, discourse, persuasion and numbers?

Waqqas Mir, a Lahore based lawyer, who has authored the paper said in 1948, post-World War II, privacy was recognized as right in the wake of the Nazi state’s intrusion into citizen privacy in Germany.

“Pakistan recognized the right for the first time in the 1973 Constitution”, he said. “The right to privacy is absolute but surveillance cannot be stopped and we have seen it being done to the German Chancellor. We have to link the issue of surveillance to attack on the freedom of expression. There are ways to strengthen the right to privacy – advocacy to let people know about digital security and rights and litigation – the Fair Trial Act, investigation into how the law is used and misused.”

The session, that was widely lauded by the participants for the learning it offered, talked about the Pakistani laws – more recently the Fair Trial Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act- dissecting them for the intrusion they allowed into privacy rights of citizens.

Surveillance strengthening Deep State

“The surveillance laws have strengthened the Deep State – no one is exempted from it”, said panelist Afrasiab Khattak, a Senator of the Awami National Party who chairs the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights.

“The most protective struggle is awareness”, he said. “Many people know the dark side of the law and how it affects human rights. The civil society has to be prepared for a long struggle particularly because the entire region in the midst of a terrible security problem and the state will always resort to the security argument. We need to have networks, platforms, alliances between civil society and the parliament and politicians to reverse these.”

“The Pakistan parliament is a case of retarded development – it started late, has had ruptures”, he said. “We need to build capacity of the parliamentarians on issues. The Right to Information is now a fundamental right after the 18th Amendment, and provinces are legislating but we should know that we are a security state but when I ask someone to upload the minutes of the meeting of the functional committee on HR on the government website, I am told we can’t. People think you are a security threat when you ask questions. There are no answers, no support even for parliamentarians. The oversight role of the parliament needs to be strengthened as well.”

The author is civil and media rights activist, journalist, researcher and trainer. He also currently heads Freedom Network. He may be reached at: aurangzaibkhan@gmail.com